


Solus

by DaScribbla



Series: The Wicked Children [1]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/M, Murder, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucille's greatest fear is being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solus

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Одна](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6360937) by [efinie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/efinie/pseuds/efinie)



> This will develop into a full collection of stories. I fell in love with this film too deeply not to write compulsively for it.

Either she is cursed, or the sickness spread within her from the walls of her prison itself, much as the red clay drips down from the ceiling cracks. Neither answer would surprise her. She knows what she does. Thomas, the meeker of the two, does not question what she asks of him. Does not question the deaths they carry out. They have been together for so long, he hardly needs to ask her to understand her motives. Their motives. They do this together and share the blame. 

His wives make her think of lightening bugs, flashing dimly in the air before vanishing altogether. The first night must be hell: when the poison is just beginning to take its toll, when the woman wakes without her husband at her side. She almost wishes she could see it for herself, but it comes down to how much she wants Thomas each night. 

And there is not a single night when she does not want him. 

When it began, she cannot remember. All she knows is that she has never once fallen asleep without his breath warming the back of her neck. Every night the same story -- his teeth buried in her shoulder to muffle his cries, the lullaby she hums to calm him, his hands everywhere at once.

_“My boy… my beautiful boy…_ ”

She cannot be alone. If there is a single axiom in her life, it is that.

 

On bad nights, she creeps up to the attic again and remembers. Her father chasing them up the stairwell, Thomas’s frantic sobs as they barricade the door and cling to each other. Her blue dress forming a puddle of lace and satin around them as they kneel at the center of the floor, waiting as the constant pounding on the door goes on. Even then, they know their paltry defenses cannot hold. He will come tearing into the room, wrath coming from his mouth, dropping from his fists.

She shields Thomas with her body. She always does. Her father does not care, but it hurts Thomas badly. She does not want to hurt Thomas. But surely this is better than the alternative.

She remembers her mother lying in her bed, dark eyes glittering cruelly. Her claw-like hand snatching her wrist in a vice grip. The teacup rattling in its saucer.

“You’ve been fucking him, haven’t you,” she hisses. She could mean anyone -- the stableboy, any of her father’s friends -- but fourteen-year-old Lucille feels her heart stop, convinced her mother is thinking of only one person. She cannot know, she cannot. 

She is afraid of the thoughts that come upon her like headaches, persuaded as she was that her mother can read her mind. What proof does she have to the contrary? On the morning after her first dream about him, from which she woke hot and sticky and blissful, they beat her savagely and never told her why.

Thomas is afraid of their mother. He is afraid of everything.

She protects him.

There was a shameful lack of tears during the act itself. They both feel guilt, but neither are willing to stop for it. They do not let it prevail.

She cannot be alone. She will do anything not to be alone.

“Say you love me,” she breathes.

“Of course I do,” Thomas replies.

“Say you’ll never leave,” she says, and Thomas obeys.

 

Years and years later, she stares at the nursery wall and tries to remember how to be strong. She shivers in the drafts, her fingernails and lips turning blue. Since her return from the asylum, she has felt that color seeping through her, as if staining her. 

“I miss your smile,” Thomas had told her, on the second day after her return. She had spent most of it at the piano, playing and playing until her fingers felt numb. It was strange to think that she ever had smiled. Only with her brother -- when she’d tell him stories or when he’d make a new toy. But words didn’t last long, and material things offered only a slight diversion. 

Now she never smiles. 

Only when Thomas says he loves her. 

 

She hears footsteps behind her, feels warmth descend as her brother wraps a blanket around her shoulders. 

“Come back to bed,” he murmurs. 

They are in a gap between wives. Except for themselves, the house is uninhabited. The servants had long since been dismissed, and Finlay rarely enters the house. They have little reason to hide. But Thomas is afraid, as she discovered. 

“Lucille, please don’t,” he says in an undertone when she tries to kiss him in the corridor. 

“What is to stop us?”

“I feel as though they’re just in the next room.” 

She does not need to ask whom he means. 

They cling to each other because there is no one else. The thought of someone taking her brother from her leaves her cold, leaves her empty. She does not know how to exist without him. They needed each other. No one else could understand them as well as they themselves did. What person could possibly comprehend the bloodstained, roiling storm that had been their lives for countless years? She protected him because he could not protect himself. He made her right, made the chemicals in her brain seem more balanced. 

On her third day back from the asylum, Thomas locked himself in his workshop for the full day. Lucille cried for hours, alone and silent in their bedroom, convinced she had done something wrong. He had tired of her, he would send her back, like refusing a dish at a restaurant. 

Just before dinner, he knocked softly on her door. Her tears had dried to mere lines of salt on her face. She did not tell him to enter, but he did anyway. Kissed her white forehead. Laid something cold, metal, and delicate into her hand.

It was a sculpture of two butterflies perched on a leaf. A tiny golden key was at the back. Thomas carefully turned it a few times and let go, as gentle chimes floated out and the butterflies began to move, their wings beating slowly.

“Never apart,” Thomas whispered, and Lucille nodded. Her tears began again. 

“Never apart.”

They embraced, pressing as close as they could. 

“I promise, I’ll never fall in love with anyone else,” Thomas said, kissing her hair. “Never.”

“And I promise.”

 

Their childhood hangs over them. The things that were said. The things that were done. Since the asylum, Lucille dwells on it more than ever. 

Her father blaming her for a petty wrong. His hand catches her across the cheek and when she cries out, he calls her a name she, at her young age, does not understand.

 

When she sleeps, her mind is plagued with visions of attendants in white, of her bare cot, the filth covering the floor. 

Of her mother, her hand like steel encircling her thin wrist. 

“You are a wicked, devious child,” she says, and Lucille feels it brand into her. 

Thomas asks her if he is wicked too. 

“Yes, Thomas,” she says. “You are as wicked as I am.”

She cannot be alone.

 


End file.
